Telephone Crisis Counsellor Offers Insights into Dealing with Stress

    SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, December 08, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Christmas is supposed to be fun - family, gifts, too much ham. But for many people, it's a time of enormous stress.

But being stressed and struggling to cope is a year round issue A 2015 Australian Psychological Society study found that anxiety symptoms were the highest they have been in the five years of the survey. In the United States, 33% of people say that they are living with extreme stress. That's a lot of people who are struggling to cope.

A new book has just been launched to help address this. Get Yourself From Crisis to Coping has been described as "your instant emotional toolbox". Mark Elder's work as a telephone counsellor gave him insights into how people can turn the emotional volume down. He uses diverse techniques such as breathing techniques, mindfulness, grounding, paraphrasing and self-parenting so that people can help themselves get back from the brink. "Just simple cognitive messages that affirm that we aren't abnormal can have a huge impact on us." he says "Knowing that we aren't painful failures and that these feelings are commonplace can take the heat off".

Each chapter provides simple, clear explanations showing how to. For example, people talk about mindfulness a lot. What exactly is it? How exactly do I do it? And how will it help?

Get Yourself From Crisis to Coping is being crowdfunded on publishizer.

Australian Mark Elder has worked as a magazine designer, a photojournalist and a musician. His travels have taken him such diverse places as war zones in Afghanistan to Everest Basecamp in Nepal and Yakuza bars in Japan. He has studied mindfulness at a Vipassana (ten days of silence) retreat as well as releasing the Kundalini in India ("oh, wow!").

But it was his work as a telephone crisis volunteer - and trainer - that inspired this book. The years that he spent on the phone gave him the skills and insights into helping people climb out of the emotional danger zone. His time in various war zones and places where people are suffering also provided many insights into the human condition.

He has had articles published in publications such as GQ, Elle, Gourmet Traveller and others. His recent diagnosis of early onset Parkinson's Disease has given him extra insights into using his coping skills. It's done nothing for his typing technique, though!

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